Flight of Dreams

by Ariel Lawhon

  “My shoes are too tight.” He says it again, and Gertrud realizes that he is speaking to her. His single functioning eye is fixed on her, and she can no more refuse him than she could leave the Doehner boys behind.

  Gertrud slides off the chair and onto her knees. The concrete floor is hard and cool and oddly soothing. She carefully unties the colonel’s boots and slips them off. She pulls off his socks as well and lays her hands on his feet to comfort him. They are the only part of his body not covered with lethal burns. He trembles a bit at her touch but does not complain.

  “Dorothea.” It’s the barest whisper of a word.

  The priest drops to his knees beside her. “You are a kind woman.”

  When Erdmann sees him he begins to speak frantically, but Gertrud notices that he has slipped into a rare dialect unknown to the American priest. But the priest hesitates for only a moment. He does not let on as the colonel gives his final confession, but rather bends low and receives the words with mercy. The priest whispers comfort into dying ears.

  Only God understands him now, Gertrud thinks.

  Soon the words have stopped and he is still. The priest straightens with a weary look and searches the row of patients for the next to die. He ambles away, leaving Gertrud alone with the body of a man she barely knows.

  THE CABIN BOY

  The airfield is dotted with hangars of various shapes and sizes, all of them dwarfed by Hangar No. 1. It’s a glorified garage, large enough to house the biggest of zeppelins in the event of a storm, but this is not where Wilhelm Balla leads Werner.

  “You don’t want to go in there,” Balla says, steering him away. “That’s where they’re taking the bodies.”

  He takes the boy instead to a low-hanging, rectangular structure that looks to Werner like a barracks. Wilhelm explains to the older gentleman who greets them, in English, who Werner is and why he’s soaking wet. At the first sign of comprehension Balla hands the cabin boy over to the ministrations of this stranger and leaves. The stone-faced steward does not offer a single look or word of farewell, but Werner understands now, after all this time and after what has just happened, that it is because, once summoned, Balla has no capacity to control his emotions. The solution for him is simply to not give in to them at all.

  “Come with me,” the old man says.

  Werner follows, too tired to object, through the hangar, down a hall, and into a small living quarters where an old woman sits at a table with a stricken expression. The man hands him over to the care of his wife, speaking so rapidly that most of the words are lost to Werner. And then he too is gone, slipping out the door to help where he can.

  The woman pulls a bundle of clothing out of a closet and sets it carefully in his arms but he can barely lift it. Werner’s arms feel as though they are weighed down with lead. And then she takes him back through the building to a long, narrow room filled with bunk beds. He changes into the dry clothes once she’s gone, then sinks into the nearest bed. He grabs the heavy woolen blanket and rolls to his side. And then the boy is gone, lost to sleep and grief and trauma before his eyes have fully closed.

  THE JOURNALIST

  The skin has blistered off Gertrud’s right palm, leaving the exposed flesh red and weeping. She cannot close her hand. She can’t focus on anything apart from the burning fire still cradled in her palm. It is as though her entire body has drawn inward to that one spot. She feels nothing else.

  Her fingers are splayed open on her lap, her gaze still fixed on them when a young medic arrives.

  “Are you badly hurt?” he asks.

  “No.” She lifts her hand an inch and inclines it toward him. “Just this.”

  He is remarkably gentle for such a large man. He lifts her hand in one of his own, pulling it close to his face. “It’s a bad burn. But it’s clean. I can wrap it and give you morphine for the pain, but time will have to do the rest.”

  The medic pulls a syringe the size of a bicycle pump from the bag at his feet and she recoils.

  “Don’t worry. It won’t hurt once the medicine hits your bloodstream.”

  “No morphine. I’ve misplaced my husband, and he won’t be able to find me if I’m lying here asleep.” The medic gives her such a look of pity that she rolls her eyes. “Oh, good grief. Leonhard’s alive. He just wandered off.”

  “Of course he is.” The medic pats her shoulder in pity and begins to clean her hand.

  Gertrud cranes her neck in search of Leonhard instead. It’s a bad habit of her husband’s, this wandering off. She has often accused him of being part Aborigine because of his penchant for going on walkabout. Sometimes he’s gone for hours. Other times it’s no more than a few minutes. Leonhard insists it’s his way of finding time to think, to sort through a problem. But problem or not, Gertrud is getting increasingly upset about his absence.

  When the medic finishes cleaning her hand and wrapping it in gauze she thanks him and slips off the table. It takes some effort but she finally locates Leonhard in a small room at the back of the hangar with Captain Lehmann. The captain is sitting on a table—like a child, she thinks—dabbing at his burns with a wad of gauze. Every few seconds he dips the gauze in a tin of picric acid, then braces himself before applying it to his skin. The medicine is astringent—the very smell burns her nose. She can’t imagine how Lehmann manages to use it on such terrible wounds. Leonhard solemnly bears witness to the gruesome ritual. He does not speak to the captain or touch him, but Gertrud knows his presence is a comfort.

  After several more moments, the wounds on Lehmann’s chest and thighs are all covered with the fatty-looking yellow salve, and he turns pleading, apologetic eyes on Leonhard.

  He is looking for absolution, Gertrud thinks.

  Leonhard bends his head down so that his cheek rests against the captain’s. It is the closest he can come to giving his friend a reassuring embrace.

  “What happened?” Leonhard asks.

  Lehmann has the blank-faced expression of a man given over to shock. He offers a shrug and even that small movement pains him. Lehmann winces, pulling air through his teeth. Gertrud can see him searching for an answer, something, anything that makes sense. “Blitzschlag,” he finally says, and then doubles over in a fit of coughing. It sounds liquid and raw. She cringes at the sound.

  Blitzschlag.

  Lightning.

  Leonhard’s shoulders begin to quiver, and Gertrud eases away from the door. He is not a man who weeps easily, and he would be furious to know she has witnessed this quiet, intimate moment between friends. There is only one thing she can do to help, so she goes in search of her medic. She finds him on the other side of the hangar, covering a body in what appears to be a wool blanket. The hand that slips out from underneath is decidedly delicate and feminine. He tucks it back under the blanket and looks at Gertrud with a detached expression known only to those who have witnessed disaster and then been called upon to tend the carnage.

  “Did you find your husband?”

  “I did. Do you still have the morphine?”

  “Yes. Are you in pain?”

  Gertrud swallows. Clears her throat. “I am. But it’s not for me.”

  She leads the young medic to Captain Lehmann and watches from the door as he receives the ghastly needle with gratitude.

  THE NAVIGATOR

  It is hours after the crash. Night has fallen. Portions of the ship still glow in the field even though the ground crew has tried their best to douse it with water hoses. Lights blare across the airfield. Jeeps race back and forth as military personnel gather and disperse and respond to orders. Max has circled the hangar at least four times, but he can’t be certain if he has been to every bed. People won’t stay still. They keep moving. They wander off. Even the patients stand and walk away. They sit. They move from a blanket on the floor to a cot against the wall, and hell if he knows whom he has spoken to and whom he hasn’t.

  Max knows it’s a flawed search method, but it’s the only one he has. He would continue with it s
traight until dawn if he didn’t feel the firm grip of Xaver Maier’s hand on his jacket sleeve.

  Max looks at the chef in wonder. “You’re alive.”

  He grins sadly. “I’m not so easy to get rid of.”

  “What do you want?”

  Maier pulls at his sleeve. “You need to come with me.”

  “I can’t. I have to find Emilie.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. We found her.”

  The chef has turned before Max can search his face for clues. He doesn’t know whether Maier’s eyes are filled with relief or sadness or pity. He knows nothing. He simply follows him through Hangar No. 1 and out into the night.

  THE JOURNALIST

  Gertrud Adelt turns in her seat to take one last look at the Hindenburg. It is well after dark, but the airfield is lit up like a macabre circus. Floodlights illuminate the wreckage, and parts of the ship still glow menacing and red. The fabric covering has burned completely away, leaving the gruesome skeleton. As men pick through the rubble their shadows are cast long across the field by the harsh lights. They look like carrion birds picking at a carcass.

  The driver glances at Gertrud in the rearview mirror. He does not bother to hide his concern. “Where should I take you?”

  Leonhard has laid himself across the backseat, his head in her lap, and she rests her good hand upon his forehead. He hasn’t breathed easily since the wreck, but the wheezing started to grow worse an hour ago and the coughing began shortly afterward. A slow, pained gurgle emanates from his chest now.

  “To a hospital,” Gertrud says. “Quickly.”

  The car maneuvers its way across the airfield and then through the cordon, bouncing through every rut and track and pothole along the way. Gertrud holds Leonhard’s head steady on her lap. She listens to his shallow breathing. Within minutes they are on the highway heading toward Toms River and Lakehurst is nothing but a strange and lurid glow behind them.

  THE CABIN BOY

  The sun has been up for hours when Werner finally wakes. He hasn’t moved all night, hasn’t even rolled out of fetal position, and his right arm is rubbery and asleep. The strange clothes he’s wearing are clean and dry—it takes him a moment to remember where they came from—but he can smell smoke in his hair and on his skin. Everything comes back to Werner. He drops his face into his hands and takes a few deep, shuddering breaths between his splayed fingers.

  When he lifts his head again he sees that the barracks are empty. Every bunk but his has been made, the blankets are stretched smooth and tucked tightly beneath the mattress. The air is still and warm, but he can hear muted shouts and the rumble of machinery outside. He doesn’t want to leave his bunk a mess, so he pulls the covers as snug as he can.

  The cabin boy steps blinking into the sunlight. The airfield looks different during the day. The clouds are gone, the sky is crisp, and the wreckage sprawls before him, unavoidable. Werner does not understand why the airship looks larger than it ever did, now that it is burned and broken. But it does, lying there stretched beside the mooring mast.

  He is still standing there staring at the Hindenburg sometime later when a hand rests on his shoulders. Wilhelm Balla passes him a newspaper and says, “Telegram your parents. Tell them you’re not dead.”

  The front page shows the airship falling and consumed by flames. The headline screams: HINDENBURG BURNS IN LAKEHURST CRASH: 21 KNOWN DEAD, 12 MISSING; 64 ESCAPE. All eight columns are devoted to the tragedy, and one of them lists the names of known fatalities. The last name reads: Werner Franz, cabin boy.

  It is a strange thing to see yourself pronounced dead while you are still in possession of a beating heart.

  “Where?” Werner asks, but his voice cracks so he clears his throat and tries again. “Where can I send a telegram?”

  “The office in Hangar No. 1.”

  The boy doesn’t move immediately. He’s staring at the paper still grasped in his hands—hands, he notes, that do not tremble at all.

  “Why do they think I’m dead?”

  “Probably because they couldn’t find you last night.” Balla waves an arm around the chaotic scene.

  Werner feels ashamed. He didn’t mean to cause anyone to worry. Especially his parents. “I was sleeping.” The admission feels juvenile.

  Something ripples across Balla’s usually impassive face. A stray, unguarded emotion. Compassion. His eyes soften and he lays a comforting hand upon the boy’s head. “As well you should have.”

  THE NAVIGATOR

  Stiff. Cold. Devoid of all emotion and thought and logic. This is Max as he sits beside Emilie’s still form. She has been laid straight on the cot, arms at her side, her head turned slightly to the left. Covered with a thick wool blanket. He has not seen what lies beneath. He has been told he does not want to. And yet he sits here, as he has the entire night, his eyes fixed upon her chest, willing it to rise and fall beneath her shroud.

  It has not.

  It will not.

  He knows this somewhere, in the deeper parts of his mind, but he won’t admit it to himself yet.

  Because he can hardly breathe himself.

  Max Zabel does not move from her side. He cannot move at all.

  He marks the passage of time by the sun at his feet. The rectangular patch from the window far above his head has moved three feet when someone drops the lockbox beside the cot. Later he will remember that it must have been last year’s postmaster, Kurt Schönherr, because a key is pressed into his hand as well. He squeezes Max’s shoulder and then leaves. There are no words to fix this, and the helmsman is smart enough not to try.

  Max looks at the lockbox, charred but perfectly intact, and then at the key in his palm. The part of his mind that controls thought and reason and choice wakes up and pushes aside the instinct he has been surviving on for the last nine hours. He looks up. He sees people going about their work. The smell of smoke and disaster still hangs heavy in the air, but something else is present as well: spring. The hangar doors are open and a southerly breeze brings an occasional breath of fresh-cut grass and warm pine. Max turns his face to the light and breathes deeply and long through his nose.

  Emilie was pronounced dead last night, but she was only positively identified an hour ago. He had held out hope, of course, that he had been keeping vigil over the wrong woman. That there was some mistake. That Emilie was simply on another part of the airfield, asleep or unconscious. But in the end it was Xaver Maier who took his last shred of hope and ground it to dust. Max had not even known that Emilie had fillings in her teeth. But the chef did, and the medical examiner confirmed the size and location that Maier described to him. And all the while Max sat beside her, his gaze on her still form, and prayed for a miracle that would never come.

  So far Maier is the only one who has been brave enough to acknowledge his grief, and this one small gesture enables Max to forgive the chef.

  “I am so sorry,” Maier said when the medical examiner pulled the blanket back over Emilie’s body.

  That’s all he said. And yet it was enough. Max nodded at him, and then the chef was gone, puffing away at his damned cigarette, leaving Max alone to say his final good-byes.

  It is the lockbox that finally draws his attention away from Emilie. The burned chunk of metal and its contents give him something to do, something to focus on besides the black hole of his grief.

  Max reaches out one trembling hand and lays it on top of the blanket, cupping the side of Emilie’s face. She is still beneath his touch. She is gone. Max rises slowly from the chair beside her, his body groaning in protest as joints and muscles stretch beyond the point of comfort.

  “I love you,” he says, then chokes back a sob when she does not answer.

  Max stoops to lift the lockbox from the floor, wincing at the twinge in his back, then tucks it under one arm. A pause, short and filled with yearning beside the cot where Emilie lies, and then he turns toward the hangar door and limps out into the sunlight.

  The sight that
greets him on the field is surprising. It is orderly. It is controlled. The images of death and carnage from the night before have been replaced by order and discipline. The airship is there, of course, but the smoke and fire and screams are gone. As are the spectators—they have been cordoned off, a mile away at the outer edge of the base. Crewmen and soldiers pick through the wreckage, like scavengers, looking for clues, for souvenirs. But not survivors. That hope is long past.

  Max grabs a passing naval officer by the sleeve. He has to order his rusted mind to search for the words in English. Finally they come. “A quiet room.”

  The young man is busy and impatient. “Why?”

  He lifts the lockbox. “The mail. I have a job to do.”

  “Right. Okay. This way.” He leads Max toward one of the smaller hangars where survivors gathered the night before. It’s mostly empty now. The healthy passengers have fled and only a handful of the Hindenburg’s crew loiter about.

  “Max!” As always Werner’s voice is bright, his expression wide open.

  “I need a room. To sort the mail.” He clears his throat. “And something to drink.”

  “Have you eaten yet?”

  Max has no idea what he looks like, but it must be alarming. Werner’s eyes rove over his uniform in amazement. The boy is too polite to comment.

  “This way. There’s an office at the back where they keep the telegraph machine.”

  Werner leads him to the small windowless room and helps him lift the lockbox onto the table. “Do you want a shower first? A change of clothes?”

  “No. That can wait. I need to do this now.”

  He has to do it now. This is his anchor.

  The door closes with a soft click, and Max sits at the table beneath the single hanging lightbulb. He opens his palm and studies the key.

  The lockbox opens easily and Max pulls out the package that Colonel Erdmann paid him to keep. It is addressed to his wife, Dorothea, and the very way he has written her name—the gentle, sloping letters—suggests an adoration that makes Max wince.